I own none of this. The Great Chicken in the Sky knows I want to. But I don't. Not making any money off of it (not that anything from my mind would make money.).

He has changed so much, Antoinette Giry thought as she surveyed the wreckage of the opera house, from the helpless creature I rescued from the circus so many years ago.

She shuddered. No, not helpless, not even then. Not helpless after killing his tormentor with his own hands and the scrap of rope used to bind him. But then the horror at killing had been evident upon his face. The last she saw of him he was plunging through the stage into the depths below, the depths she herself had given him. And his face showed no remorse as he seized Christine and slashed the rope that held the chandelier aloft.

How, she wondered yet again, could he have changed so much? How could he have become someone that even I, almost his sister, the closest thing to family he's ever known, could call a monster?! "How did you become a monster, little brother?"

"A monster, Madame? I am a monster to everyone. Does that make me a monster to my sister as well?" It was a familiar voice, for all that he rarely spoke to her in person, preferring instead to communicate by means of notes left in odd places. But the grief, the unendurable grief and pain in that voice—no one should ever have to feel that.

"How can you be anything but, Erik? You kill often, for no reason other than it suits your plans. You felt nothing for the hundreds of people who could have been killed tonight when you released the chandelier. You took Christine—

She had not looked at him as she delivered this tirade, but at the mention of Christine, he seized her shoulder and turned her to face him. He still wore no mask, but to her credit, she did not flinch. In truth, the deformities of the right side of his face were now almost matched by the grief that twisted the left side. "Don't speak to me of Christine, Madame. I have lost her forever, so completely…don't ever speak of her. Please."

It was the 'please,' the syllable he had spoken less and less to her over the years, which caught her attention. She took his hand. "Oh, my poor brother, what has happened to you?"

She knew she couldn't offer him much comfort. Clearly, no one could give him comfort when he was like this. And really, she didn't want to know what had happened. But he spoke anyway.

"Sister, I was a fool. An idiot. I made her choose between us. She chose me to save—his—life. And…" He dissolved into silent sobs.

Madame Giry hesitated for only a fraction of a second, the fraction it took to consider the man before her. The man she knew as so many people-the Phantom of the Opera, the genius, the murderer, the rejected lover-but most of all, the terrified and tormented boy, her little brother by spirit if not by blood, and it was this sobbing, miserable Erik whom she enfolded into her arms.